AUTHORITIES INVESTIGATE INDUSTRIAL FIRE

FIREFIGHTERS SPEND SUNDAY ON THE JOB: Firefighters were called back to the Industrial Fuels and Resources chemical recycling plant in Scott City Sunday to extinguish smoldering fire under the debris of the former processing buildings, top. Firefighters were able to save a large warehouse, background, containing 2,000 barrels of solid hazardous waste by-product. At left, a hot, tired firefighter gets a cool hosedown Sunday to wash off hazardous material after working inside the burned out processing plant. (Photos by David Hente)

SCOTT CITY Authorities are investigating the cause of the Saturday night fire that destroyed chemical processing facilities of Industrial Fuels and Resources Inc.

The plant is located in the Scott City Industrial Park, east of the Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport.

Authorities said the fire started at about 8:50 p.m. It destroyed two of the buildings in the Industrial Fuels Resources (IFR) complex, but officials said the remainder of the plant including a large, wood frame warehouse containing packaged hazardous waste by-products, and several 1,000-gallon tanks containing recycled hazardous chemicals was not damaged. The complex houses 10 buildings in all.

IFR recycles hazardous chemical waste solvents, sludges and solids, such as paint and ink. The materials are converted into fuels for use in cement kilns.

Scott City Fire Chief Les Crump said the fire started in the processing plant, which was operating at the time.

"We've got some ideas about how the fire started, but we'll have to wait until it's cool enough to get in there and look around before we'll know for sure," Crump said.

Assistant Fire Chief Kenny Page said plant employees discovered the fire and called for help.

"As we were driving down East Nash Road, plant employees stopped us and told us what was burning," Page said. "At that point, I decided to hold up on any kind of an attack until we knew exactly what type of material was on fire."

Page immediately called for assistance from fire departments in Scott and Cape Girardeau counties, and asked Brian Miller, coordinator of the Cape Girardeau County Office of Emergency Preparedness and a hazardous materials authority, to come to the fire scene.

"I knew I didn't have enough water or manpower to make an attack on the fire and to protect the other buildings and my firefighters, so I decided to wait until the water tankers arrived," Page said.

While waiting for the fire departments to arrive, Page said he, Miller and two plant officials inspected the burning buildings to determine the extent of the fire and what other buildings were threatened.

"Right away, we knew it was too late to save the processing buildings," he said, "so we decided to try to save the warehouse that had about 2,000, 50-gallon drums of solid chemical waste by-product stored in them, and the nearby tank farm with several thousand gallons of recycled hazardous chemicals."

When the first water tankers arrived at the site, officials ordered the assault on the fire at about 10 p.m.

Page said two water-deluge guns were set up at the east and west sides of the warehouse building to create a "cooling curtain of water" to protect the warehouse building from the intense heat of the burning processing buildings.

"Our only goal was to prevent the hazardous materials stored in the warehouse from igniting," he said.

Working in a continuous loop, the water tankers carried more than 125,000 gallons of water from fire hydrants in the Greater Cape Industrial Park, across I-55, to dump-tanks situated near the fire and warehouse.

"Water was our biggest problem," Page added. "It would have been a lot easier for all of us if there had been a 10-inch water main to draw from. We would have had an unlimited supply of water."

The industrial park does not have a water supply. Several businesses have small wells, but officials said those would be ineffective for fire-fighting.

Scott City Mayor Shirley Young didn't mince words in her criticism of the Missouri Department of Economic Development for its refusal to provide a grant to construct a water main into the industrial park.

"I wish the DED could see what is happening here tonight," Young said early Sunday morning. "We made every effort to get a grant for the water line."

Young said that after a delay of several years, the city borrowed $360,000 to build the water line, which now is under construction.

"The shame is, it was the people from Industrial Fuels that led the delegation asking to be annexed into the city for water and fire protection," the mayor said. "You can see this water line is needed for fire protection and for the growth and jobs it would help create."

As the fire burned, a plume of black smoke drifted northeastward toward the Lone Star Cement Plant in south Cape Girardeau, where city officials monitored the air to determine if the toxic smoke was any danger to residents.

By 1:30 a.m. Sunday, Page said the fire had pretty well burned itself out, but a few of the firefighters remained at the scene through the daylight hours Sunday.

At about 10 a.m., Crump and other fire officials, decided to call the firefighters back to the scene to extinguish fires smoldering beneath the debris. Crump said solid, hazardous waste by-product trapped under the collapsed metal roof was still burning, creating toxic smoke that due to a northern wind shift was drifting toward the west end of Scott City.

"At that point, we had two options: to evacuate the west end of Scott City, or send firefighters back in to remove the metal roof and put out the fire in the solid waste by-product," he said. "We decided going back in would be a lot easier."

Scott City, East Cape County and New Hamburg-Benton-Commerce fire departments responded to the call, along with Cape Girardeau County's refilling van.

Crump said an all-out effort was being made Sunday to put out the remaining fires by nightfall.

Ten fire departments, and at least 83 firefighters from Scott and Cape Girardeau counties responded to the fire Saturday, including: Scott City, Cape Girardeau, Sikeston, East (Cape) County, Gordonville, Delta, Whitewater, Fruitland, Millersville, and the New Hamburg-Benton-Commerce Department.

Deputies from Scott and Cape Girardeau counties assisted Scott City Police in sealing off the area and controlling traffic at the I-55 Nash Road exit ramps.

No injuries were reported, but firefighters were kept under constant observation for possible heat or toxic smoke injuries.

Ambulances from North Scott County and the Cape County Private Ambulance Service also stood by at the nearby Rhodes Truck Stop on Nash Road.

Crump said the fire was the most serious the department has ever responded to.

"There's no doubt about it, this is the largest incident we've ever been involved in," he said.

Despite the large number of fire departments and firefighters at the scene, Crump said everything went reasonably well.